By abusing power, the Senate Majority Leader has held back progress on everything from LGBTQ rights to environmental protections. He must go.
Inside Donald Trump’s cacophony of crazy stands Mitch McConnell. The Senate Majority Leader has his hand firmly on the dial that determines presidential power, and for McConnell setting that dial is an exercise in pure partisanship.
He became the Senate Majority Leader when the Republicans regained control of the 114th Congress in 2015. With his eye on Republican control of the federal judiciary, McConnell blocked President Obama’s judicial nominations to lower federal courts by refusing to bring them to a Senate vote. The Kentucky Republican turned the dial of presidential power for Obama as close to zero as he could.
The big pay-off came in 2016 when Obama nominated Merrick Garland to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by the unexpected death of Justice Antonin Scalia and McConnell refused to move Garland’s nomination forward in the Senate. Republican Donald Trump took office as president in 2017 with a very high number of judicial vacancies to fill, along with the top prize of a Supreme Court seat, all thanks to McConnell. With a Republican in the White House, even incompetent Trump, McConnell brought the dial of presidential power to Spinal Tap’s legendary eleven.
The Unitary Theory of the Executive is supported in some conservative circles and has found its way into recent Republican administrations. Popular in both Bush administrations and now on steroids in the Trump administration, it basically declares the president’s powers under Article II of the Constitution broad enough to give the president far-reaching control of the executive branch and diminishes Congress’s Article I powers to check the executive. As we see this theory of presidential power put into practice, it is the Senate Majority Leader who controls the level of presidential power.
McConnell has pushed hard and fast to allow Trump to fill those vacancies on the federal bench. Neil Gorsuch was sworn in to fill the vacant Scalia seat on April 10, 2017. Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Court’s swing vote, retired on July 10, 2018 and his seat was filled on October 6, 2018 by Brett Kavanaugh, pushing the Supreme Court perilously to the Right, a triumph for McConnell.
The Republican Senate is now confirming lower court judges to the federal bench who refuse to affirm the landmark ruling against segregation in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Wendy Vitter, dodging such an affirmation during her confirmation hearing, was recently confirmed by the Senate as a Federal District Judge in Louisiana. Meanwhile, the Republican drumbeat steps up with draconian anti-abortion legislation in Alabama, Georgia, and Missouri, with the goal to do the unthinkable and reverse Roe v. Wade, a long-standing precedent so critical to women. We see the handiwork of McConnell spinning that partisan dial.
McConnell has recently scored a new aluminum plant for his constituents in Ashland, Ky. Rusal, the Russian aluminum company partially owned by oligarch Oleg Deripaska, is investing $200 million in the Kentucky project. Mitch advocated for the successful lifting of sanctions against Rusal. Vitter’s husband, lobbyist David Vitter, a former Republican senator from Louisiana who had bit of a problem with prostitutes awhile back, is also involved in this one. The Democrats want to know more.
Trump, meanwhile, did not know William Barr before he nominated him to be attorney general on December 7, 2018, one week after the death of George H.W. Bush. Given Barr’s service as AG for H.W. Bush, McConnell surely knew of Barr’s devotion to presidential power. Barr told Bush the Elder he didn’t need a Congressional okay to invade Iraq. Bush also had Manuel Noriega arrested in Panama after Barr advised him. McConnell surely knew of Barr’s advice to Bush regarding the Iran-Contra pardons that brought down the investigation of an Independent Counsel to protect Bush as he left office in 1992.
The Washington Post provides an excellent account of William Barr’s service to George H.W. Bush in Tom Hamburger’s May 16 piece. McConnell knew exactly who Barr was when he pushed his nomination as Trump’s AG through the Republican Senate and later told us “case closed” in regard to the Mueller investigation. McConnell knew full well Barr would pull out all the stops to protect Trump from Congressional oversight and embark on a new unfounded investigation against Trump’s perceived enemies, those who did their jobs to protect us from Russian intrusion into our democracy. It was McConnell who prevented President Obama from informing the American people of that Russian intrusion in the fall of 2016 before they cast their votes for president.
McConnell also offers Trump protection against Articles of Impeachment from the Democratic controlled House of Representatives as Trump defies House Democrats’ legitimate efforts to conduct Constitutionally mandated oversight of the Executive. House Democrats are left with little recourse against McConnell’s reckless use of power as Senate Majority Leader.
With the presidential election of 2020 on the horizon we must recognize the need for a Democratic majority in the Senate. If McConnell or any other Republican leads the Senate in 2021, the dial determining presidential power will find its way to the bottom once again should a Democrat win the presidential election. In order to clean house after Trump, the Democrats must control Congress completely along with the White House. If not, Democratic voters, indeed the American majority, will find themselves frustrated yet again with the Republican minority holding progress back at every turn. Taking the Senate is an uphill fight for Democrats, but it is a fight we must not lose in 2020.
Susan SurfTone is a musician, former FBI agent, and regular contributor to The Advocate.
TheBirminghamBear on May 28th, 2019 at 02:31 UTC »
No.
Once more for the road - McConnell is nothing more than a loathsome mercenary hired by corporate and foreign powers to achieve their ends at the cost of the American people, to shovel our tax dollars and our sovereign power into their hands, for the personal and petty profit of the soldiers in his employ - Republican politicians.
He's not an evil mastermind, he's not the grand architect or the wizard behind the curtain. He serves at the pleasure of Senate Republicans; if they didn't want him there, they would be rid of him in a heartbeat. The truth is, whatever they say, whatever they do, they like him there. He soaks up the anger and outrage and abuse. They can pretend to be "good guys" - like that spineless, worthless shit Mitt Romney - while wholeheartedly endorsing the entire corrupt campaign behind the scenes. Mitch McConnell is despised by everyone, even his own party. Majority Leader isn't a desirable position. Look at Nancy Pelosi - she immediately became the sole target of public ire for decisions like not impeaching Trump, despite the fact that she's almost certainly carrying out the wishes of the consensus of thousands of Democrat officials and politicians. This isn't her plan, just like this is not Mitch's plan.
Mitch McConnell is serving the designs and plans of a few massive corporations and other huge donors. That's it. The religious zealots, the industrial titans and long-time Republican donors - he passes bills like the 2018 Tax Theft bill that pleases them and delivers profits to them, while safeguarding Republican power.
I say this because articles like this blaming him for the entire debacle help him fulfill exactly his purpose: establish a single focal point of blame without addressing the systemic issues and network of corrupt and criminal actors that actually pull the strings. "Mitch McConnell is Really Destroying America" as a headline (which is all that most people read anyway) makes the natural implication that removing Mitch McConnell fixes the problem. But there's always another Mitch McConnell. Articles like this give him far too much credit and cement a perception that without him, the whole machine falls apart.
But this is factually bankrupt. The system, the real agent of America's destruction, is made up of thousands of Republican megadonors donors like the Mercers and Sheldon Addleson, corporate conglomerates like the Oil industry and Telecomm, foreign powers like Putin's Russia and Mr. Bonesaw's Saudi Arabia, and religious organizations like the Mormon Church. They funnel billions of dollars and precise, exact instructions into the Republican party, which is nothing more than a mercenary force to carry out the donors wishes. The donors pay money, the Republicans fight the war. McConnell is just another in a long line of generals. There are endless candidates. Ted Cruz could be a McConnell. So could Marco Rubio or Mitt Romney.
Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader are not enviable positions. Look at Paul Ryan. They don't really wield power. It isn't like a President, who is publicly elected. They're appointed by the party, and they're just the hate sponges for the party, the ones who will take all the blame while more "likable" candidates play bridgemaker in hopes of vying for President. It doesn't matter who serves in that capacity. Dark money is the rot, because it stacks the government with people acting directly against the public interest.
All of the emotion, the partisan bickering, the sentiment and loathing, that's all a smokescreen. These people, Republicans, they are not politicians. Not in the slightest. The only thing they have in common with politicians is many of them are lawyers and they wear suits. They don't govern. The Republican party has done literally nothing even remotely resembling governance in a long time. When was the last time they passed a bill meant to improve some part of public or private life for the average American citizen?
Do not delude yourselves. This is not about Trump, not about McConnell, not even about the Republican party. Eliminate one mercenary group, and another takes its place. The Democrats are on the side of the angels currently, but only by default, only because Republicans have devolved so far into criminality and corruption (mostly out of desperation) that it would be impossible not to be the good guys in comparison.
If we do not do something about dark money in politics, any party, no matter how conservative or liberal, can easily be infiltrated and eventually overrun with people acting in the interest of dark money over public interest.
If McConnell were following his own comprehensive grand plan, you wouldn't see this ridiculous flip-flopping of stances and interests nearly overnight. That's why Republicans are such demonstrable and laughable hypocrites. Their hypocrisy is almost absurdist - their actions frequently contradict their words because they have no real guiding ideology. They're just working for the highest bidder. Much like a mercenary might fight for one side on one day, and then the opposing side the next day, Republicans do whatever they're told by their masters, while doing preposterous verbal gymnastics on TV. Just look at what we've witnessed in a short period of time:
Republicans outspoken against Russia pre-2016; immediately turn into vocal and ardent Russia supporters (because Russia started paying them and helping them win).
Republicans outspoken against and opposed to executive power pre-2106; immediately and vocally support the extreme tryannical overreach of Donald Trump (because he's a Republican).
Conservative think-tank The Heritage Foundation creates outline of Affordable Care Act & Republican Mitt Romney puts it into place as governor of Massachusetts - immediately and vocally condemn it as soon as Obama makes it the foundation of his healthcare policy
Republicans bemoan and condemn the increase of the federal deficit - until Trump creates one of the largest federal deficits in recent memory to give tax dollars to corporations. Then they vocally and proudly support it.
Republicans stoke xenophobia and drone on and on and one about the threat of "Radical Islam" - until Trump wants to sell billions of dollars of weaponry to Saudi Arabia, the most powerful, hardcore "islamic extremists" in the Middle East. Then, Saudi Arabia is a wonderful beacon of freedom (because they're paying them).
This is why they wouldn't be successful without a propaganda wing like Fox News. All politicians do a form of doublespeak, but there is nothing comparable to the hypocrisy of modern-day Republicans. Nothing. No 20th century absurdist novelist could ever dream up these clowns. They need to cut off their voters from reality and isolate them in a sterile alternate universe where they bury certain hypocrisies or explain them away and build a narrative utterly incomparable to the real world, because whatever you want to say about Republican voters, they have all the same mental capacities as your average Joe. They could easily see how badly they, personally, are being fucked over by the very people they choose to represent them - if they weren't living in the alternate universe that is Conservative Media.
All this to say that none of this is part of McConnell's grand design. Nor Trump's, nor even the entire Republican party. There's no teleology to any of this, no method to the madness, no overarching evil scheme. That's the fiction junkies in us, always envisioning the evil wizard plotting brilliant and infinitely complex schemes to redesign the world.
Poll Republican voters about what they think they're getting - the world they think their votes are buying - and you'll get a hundred different answers and illustrations of a hundred different worlds, none of which remotely resemble what Republicans are actually building.
The world Republicans are building is nothing more than a grotesque collage of the wants and needs of some of the richest and most morally and ethically bankrupt people and organizations on the planet, disparate in scope but almost all entirely to the detriment of the American people, because the only thing Republicans can trade for their donors' cash is federal tax dollars and the power and sovereignty of the American citizens they represent. It is ever-shifting, ever-changing, but always shitty. Either a perpetual war or economic cycles of boom-and-bust or rampant xenophobia - it doesn't matter. Republicans are a black box that donors put a handful of small bills into and get back trillions of our tax dollars and untold powers over public land or contractual rights or legal rights.
This is why the actions of Republicans need to be firmly divorced from the personalities of single individuals like Trump and McConnell and also from the veil of "conservatism" or political ideology in general. They don't care. They're mercenaries. Start acting like it. Stop talking and yelling to them and start yelling over them, to their masters, because these are the people and organizations destroying America, and we need to identify them, call them out, and recognize Republicans for the flunkies they are.
EDIT: Everything begins and ends with the money. To begin with Citizens United must be overturned, but we need to keep going. Money and all forms of perverse incentives need to be dealt with, or we will always be governed by the mercenary armies of despots and multinational conglomerates. I don't care which party you vote for, truly I don't. The only thing that matters is to vote for people comitted to removing dark money from politics and most importantly watching over them with intense scrutiny every single day they're in office to make sure they follow up on that promise.
Mamathrow86 on May 28th, 2019 at 02:24 UTC »
Remember everyone, a vote for Dem Senator in your State is a vote against McConnell. The only way we beat him is to take the majority. Tortoises live forever. This mother fucker ain’t gonna die.
--Captain__America-- on May 28th, 2019 at 01:57 UTC »
The fact that McConnell has made it this far milkshake free is a crime